


Baggage

by Rocky_T



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 03:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16673647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rocky_T/pseuds/Rocky_T
Summary: Set in the 6th season between "Alice" and "Memorial." B'Elanna Torres contemplates her relationship with Tom Paris.





	Baggage

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted January 2006.  
> For Seema.

The hardest part about breaking up is getting your stuff back.

Not that I had all that much to begin with. Even if Chakotay hadn't blown up our ship near the Caretaker's Array, there wasn't exactly a lot in terms of material possessions I cared about saving. You tend to travel light in the Maquis, for obvious reasons. The more stuff you drag around with you just means the more you have to lose. I guess that applies to people as well.

Over the ensuing years on _Voyager_ , of course, I did accumulate some things. A few changes of decent clothing, to wear off-duty. Some downloads of trashy romance novels I found in the ship's library computer. And some pictures and knickknacks to brighten up my quarters, make them look a little less sterile and institutional. A little less like Starfleet.

Tom, though, was another story altogether. I've never seen anyone accumulate so much junk as he did. Most of it pretty useless, too. He thought nothing of replicating elaborate costumes to be worn once or at most twice on the holodeck, in some harebrained fantasy he'd discard the moment he grew tired of it. Or old-fashioned books, made of paper, which held a fraction of what a PADD could. As for knickknacks, he certainly had me beat in that department--I swear he had a dozen for every one of mine. To say nothing of the Klingon items he was always pushing at me, in his misguided attempts to get me to show more interest in my 'native' culture. He thought nothing of this incredible waste--until he'd run out of replicator credits barely ten days into the month and have to spend the next several weeks cadging them from me, or from Harry.

Tom's arms were folded across his chest now as he lounged oh-so-casually in the doorway leading to his bedroom, watching me shove my belongings into a bag. He was officially on duty, so his arrival a few moments ago had been unexpected. I couldn't imagine how he'd convinced the Captain or Chakotay to let him leave the bridge in the middle of his shift, short of an emergency. (And the computer signaling you your soon-to-be-ex has arrived in your cabin isn't one by anybody's definition). He must have known I had planned on packing without an audience; clearly, he had other ideas.

"Do you mind?" I said, gesturing past his shoulder. "There are some things in the other room I'd like to get."

Tom didn't budge. "Come on, B'Elanna," he said, "you're not being reasonable."

"Fine. Keep the damn negligee," I snapped. "Consider it my contribution to your next girlfriend." There was a hairbrush and some cosmetics in the bedroom as well, but they were easily replaceable, not worth wasting any more time arguing with him. I hefted my bag and turned to go.

He grabbed my shoulder. "Wait." 

I glared at him. He immediately released me and held his hands up in a conciliatory gesture. "Please."

"We've been through this already," I said, not bothering to hide my annoyance. "You and me--it's over, Tom. I'm sick of being in a relationship all by myself, being the only one who makes an effort--"

"That's not fair! I've--"

"What you've done--over and over--is treat me like a convenience! Don't try to deny it. When it suits you, you come around, you're willing to spend time together. But as soon as something new and shiny comes along, you drop me without a thought. A holoprogram, some unusual alien technology--it doesn't matter. Suddenly I'm at the bottom of your list of priorities. Only when your interest palls do you wander back--until the next new thing, something better comes along." I took a deep breath, not really surprised to find my hands were shaking. "What happened with that alien spaceship, 'Alice', is just the latest example. I'm tired of being treated this way! You don't care about me, not really."

"I do care," he protested. "I care a great deal."

"Oh, don't make me laugh! Why can't you admit it, Tom, you're only interested in the sex. On your terms, when you want it--anything I want or have the temerity to suggest suddenly becomes too 'confining', makes you want to bolt for the nearest exit. Well, I'm doing you a favor--this time, I'm the one who's leaving." 

He made no further move to stop me as I stormed into the corridor. 

Too late, I realized I'd left a pair of slippers behind--old, scuffed, but very comfortable, especially at the end of a 14 hour duty shift. Too bad. They were just one more thing I'd have to write off as a loss about this relationship.

***  
On one of the larger starships, say, a _Galaxy_ -class with a crew complement of over a thousand, it's possible to go weeks, if not months, without running into someone you'd rather avoid. On a ship the size of _Voyager_ , however, you have no such luxury. Much to my own surprise, I managed it for nearly a week--chiefly by sending Joe Carey to deliver the engineering reports at the daily staff meetings, something I did occasionally anyway, both to give Joe the added prestige and experience and to relieve myself of the tedium of those meetings where Seven or Tuvok or both would drone on endlessly about some minor detail. I also avoided Sickbay--again, something I would have done anyway. Tom preferred skipping Neelix's cooking--when he had the replicator credits for it--so the Mess Hall was the last place I expected to run into him. 

But on the sixth day after our breakup was final, that was where he cornered me.

"Tom," I said curtly, rising to my feet and grabbing my tray.

"B'Elanna, please don't leave on my account."

"Don't flatter yourself. I was finished anyway," I said, glad that it was true. Mostly, anyway.

"Look, I'm not here to bother you, or ask you to reconsider. I just--" He paused for a moment and I could see the muscles in his jaw working.

"Then what do you want?" I was in no mood for any games.

"I saw you returned all my stuff that I'd left in your quarters."

I'd done it the day I'd gone to retrieve my own things. "That's right," I said. I was briefly surprised it had taken him this long to notice, then wondered if this was just a prelude to his finally giving me back the few items I'd left behind. 

No such luck. Tom's eyes darted to my face. "I didn't expect--uh, you brought back the toaster."

"Yes." I didn't understand why he was making such a big deal over this. It was his, after all. Another one of his damn fool wastes of time and effort. It would be so much easier to just replicate the toast, already made. But no--Tom had to first replicate an old-fashioned toaster, complete with a power source to run it (there was a month's worth of credits right there), then replicate a loaf of bread, a special knife to slice it, and a jar of peanut butter. And only then prepare his meal by hand. Such a waste.

"I thought maybe you'd want to keep it."

I shook my head in bemusement. "Why would I want to do that?"

"To make peanut butter toast, of course." He gave a weak smile. "The breakfast of champions."

"Why would I want to do that?" I repeated. "Did it ever occur to you, Tom, that if I wanted toast, all I'd have to do is ask Neelix?" I raised my voice over the beginnings of his disdainful objections. Personally, I always thought Tom, and Harry, made too much of a fuss over Neelix's cuisine. Try living on discarded Cardassian field rations or what you can scrounge from a trash receptacle, and then you learn to appreciate food whose only flaws are ingredients a little different from what you're used to. "Or just replicate the whole dish myself? With whatever topping I wanted--something a hell of a lot more palatable than peanut butter--already on it?"

"You don't like peanut butter?"

Typical Tom, to fixate on that one supremely minor point, to the exclusion of everything else I'd been trying to tell him. "No, I don't. As a matter of fact, I can't stand it."

"How can anyone not like peanut butter?" he said in disbelief.

There were a number of replies I could have made, like, "Why didn't you ever notice I didn't like the damn stuff, that I always took my toast plain while you were slathering yours?" Or, "I didn't grow up on Earth, eating Terran foods, so why would I be expected to have the same likes as you?" 

But I said none of these. I suddenly noticed the Mess Hall was more crowded than it had been earlier, and our conversation had attracted the interest of a number of people. 

Perhaps Tom realized it as well. "I guess I'll hold on to the toaster then," he mumbled.

"You do that," I said, brushing past him.

***  
That's another thing about serving on such a small ship. Everyone knows everyone else's business--and moreover, feels obligated/entitled to comment. Or give advice. It seemed like every single person on _Voyager_ had something to say about my breakup with Tom.

"Good move," Nicoletti said to me while running diagnostics of the tertiary plasma relays. "You can do better than Paris. The Delaney sisters say--"

"Are you sure about this?" Neelix said anxiously, his coffee pot poised over my empty cup. "I know Tom has his flaws, but surely you can see he's learned from his past mistakes--"

And everywhere I turned, it seemed, there was Harry's doleful face, silently reproaching me for dumping his best friend, or Seven's sharp quizzical look--she'd just have to get her observations on 'human mating rituals' from somewhere else, I thought savagely. I avoided Chakotay, too, not wanting to see his smug 'I told you so'; his dislike, or perhaps more accurately his distrust, of Tom had just been borne out in spades. Even the Doctor and Tuvok seemed anxious to weigh in on the state of my love life. I gave them no opportunity to do so. 

The only person who didn't appear eager to offer an opinion--didn't appear all that interested, period, to tell you the truth--was the Captain. Perhaps having to deal with so much speculation about her own love life (or lack thereof) had something to do with it. Or it was yet another sign of her lack of interest in anything to do with the crew--other than Seven, of course--or just about anything that wouldn't result in finding a way back home. Either way, I was grateful.  
***

Eventually, of course, the gossips turned to other things. Tom and I were old news. There was only so much that could be said, that hadn't been said a hundred times already. Kind of how I'd felt toward the end of our relationship. Besides, there were more pressing matters to deal with. 

Never a dull moment on _Voyager_ \--an axiom as true now in the sixth year of our journey as it had been in our first. New alien species, old Earth probes; we never knew what each day would bring--especially with a crewmember like Seven around, who seemed determined to stir up trouble.

"I don't know why you put up with her!" I exploded to the Captain one day in the Ready Room. "This latest stunt of hers--I thought we'd reached an all-time low when she took it upon herself to revive the Vaadwaur without bothering to think about the consequences." As if we needed yet another enemy, now we had them as well as the Turei to worry about. "But now Seven's wild conspiracy theories and paranoia have seriously compromised the safety of this ship." Which was a nice way of saying she'd single-handedly set the senior staff at each other's throats. "She's been nothing but trouble since we picked her up!" 

There was a lot more I'd like to have added, like the fact that anyone else guilty of just a few of the former Borg's infractions would have found themselves spending the rest of our trip home in the brig. But I didn't want to push my luck.

Janeway's eyes flashed and for a moment I was afraid I'd gone too far. Then, unexpectedly, the Captain sighed. 

"There are still some difficulties to be worked out, B'Elanna," she acknowledged. "I know it hasn't been easy--and as Chief Engineer, you've borne the brunt of many of Seven's 'excesses.'" Janeway rose from behind her desk and placed her hand on my arm, the way she always did when she wanted to make a personal connection--or emphasize a point. "But you've got to remember these are unique circumstances. Seven's encounter with the Collective at such a young age resulted in her arrested development. For all her technical brilliance and her mature appearance, she's still little more than a child--like she was when she was first assimilated."

It was my turn to sigh. I'd heard all these arguments before--and on a good day, even believed them. "Believe me, I'm not unsympathetic, Captain." I took a deep breath. "I'm just damn tired of cleaning up her messes." 

Janeway released me and passed her hand over her face. "I know it's not easy." It struck me that even her patience was not infinite. Probably she was even more sick of Seven than the rest of us were. 

"Don't you ever get tired?" I said, my curiosity getting the better of my sense of discretion. "At what point do you give up, say it's not worth it?"

The Captain smiled wryly as if she knew exactly what I was thinking and privately agreed. But all she said was, "It comes down to the following: are we better off with her than without her? And despite the difficulties, I think the answer is the former. For all the problems she's caused, there are also plenty of times she has saved us all." 

And that was all I was going to get. I headed back to Engineering, not under the impression anything was going to be different, but feeling a little bit better I'd at least had the chance to air my grievances.

Later that evening, my duty shift over, I returned to my cabin. I had no plans: nothing to do and nowhere to go, a rare night to myself. I thought briefly of checking to see if any of the holodecks were open, then almost immediately decided against it. They were probably all booked anyway; the overlap of Alpha and Beta shifts was prime time and it was almost impossible to find a last minute cancellation. Especially since the Irish village program had become so popular. Fine. I'd use the unexpected leisure time to catch up on my reading, or maybe get to bed early for a change.

I placed my soiled uniform in the refresher and for some reason, the thought crossed my mind how Tom always used to just drop his discarded clothes on the floor, not bothering to check that he had a clean uniform handy until right before he was about to go on duty. It was one of the things--one of the many things--that used to drive me crazy. Not that I'm such a neat freak, but as an engineer, a sense of order, that everything has its proper place, is essential. But Tom was always too much in a hurry to worry about incidentals, always eager to plunge ahead and go on to the next big adventure. Sometimes I envied him that ability.

"Are you better off with him or without him?" 

I could have sworn those words were spoken out loud, and it took me a moment to remember where I had heard them. And then I recalled how Captain Janeway had said something similar that afternoon, about Seven. Different context, but still…

I pushed away the thought, picked up my novel, and settled in for another solitary night.

***  
That turned out to be the last free time I had for quite a while. I was kept too busy to think--about Tom, about the Alpha Quadrant, about anything that didn't have immediate bearing on the functioning of the ship's systems--and frankly, I was glad.

After more than 36 straight hours in crisis-containment mode, I wasn't in any shape to argue when Chakotay ordered me off-duty. I was nearly asleep when the door signal chirped and more than tempted to just ignore it. But it could have been important. It didn't occur to me, in my sleep-deprived state, that if I was needed back in Engineering, they would have commed me, not come by in person.

I opened the door in the middle of an enormous yawn, and did a double-take when I saw who was there. It was Tom.

"I was doing some straightening up and I found these under the bed," he said, holding up something brown and vaguely fuzzy. It took a moment for me to realize it was my old slippers. "I thought you'd want them."

I stared at him in disbelief, then belatedly came up with a response. "Uh, thank you." I took the slippers from him--careful not to touch his fingers--and waited for him to leave.

"May I come in?"

I exhaled loudly. It had been months since our encounter in the Mess Hall, the last time he'd attempted to speak to me. Surely he didn't think after all this time anything had changed. "Tom, I really don't think that's a good idea."

"Please, B'Elanna," he said softly, a curious note of pleading in his voice. "I just want to talk."

"I think we've already said everything that needs to be said." 

"Just give me a couple of minutes." Once more, he held up his hands, as if to show me he had nothing to conceal. "Five minutes and I swear I'll go."

Against my better judgement, I moved aside to let him enter.

He glanced around the room, his eyes darting from one object to another as if he'd never seen them before. He cleared his throat. "Look, I'm not perfect."

_That's the understatement of the year_ , I commented silently. I let the slippers drop to the floor and folded my arms across my chest.

"I never claimed I was," Tom continued. "But at the same time, I didn't think I was as big a screw-up as I obviously am." His eyes met mine, and I was surprised to see the bitter self-reproach so clearly reflected in their depths. "All my life I've let people down, disappointed their expectations. My friends, my instructors at the Academy, my father...But I never meant to do that with you."

I opened my mouth to reply, but Tom wasn't finished yet.

"I know we fell into a really destructive pattern--things would be going great for a while, then I'd say or do something to upset you and we'd have a fight, then eventually make up and then the whole thing would begin again. I don't blame you for getting tired of it. Hell, I feel the same way." He took a step closer. I couldn't look away from the intensity of his gaze. "But I'm not sure how to break out of the cycle without help."

"It hasn't all been your fault," I said haltingly. "Kahless knows, I'm not the easiest person to get along with either. I have my moods where every little thing can set me off--" The memories of all the times I'd snapped at him, for little or no provocation, came flooding back. "There's enough blame to go around."

Tom waved his hand, as if he could make all our respective baggage disappear just like that. "I need you, B'Elanna. With you, I'm a better person than I could ever be without you."

A number of possible replies were on the tip of my tongue. It was too late, it would be too hard, we were too different, clearly the two of us would never be able to make a go of it. We were better off apart--or were we?

"I need you," he said again, his face only inches from my own. I could feel his warm breath against my cheek, could remember the feel of his skin beneath my fingertips. "Please, B'Elanna, please give me another chance. You're too important to me, this thing between us is too precious to let it slip away."

It wasn't a declaration of love, but of need--which was still more than he'd ever managed before. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough. At least for us to try again.


End file.
